Abstracts AGM 2003 Aberystwyth

Network Annual Gathering, Aberystwyth, Wales, 26 - 29 June 2003

Abstracts

The Lifestyle Lab - Adventures In Eco-Anthropology
Peter Harper
Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth, Wales

The active environment movement tends to divide into a 'lifestyle' wing that emphasises changes in the way we live as individuals and households, and a 'techie' wing that promotes higher-level technological changes. Personally I think both are necessary, but by its nature the lifestyle wing tends to be rather weak on generating hard data that can help us generalise our growing experience. I wanted to help fill this gap by examining real households as an anthropologist might, including my own.

Creating a Sustainable Planet
Timothy Glazier

This presentation will question the basis of the present day economic paradigm which, it will suggest, is locked into the mechanistic mould of the material sciences. The effect of this thinking, developed within European culture, but now acquiesced to globally, has been to create a world economy based on the right of personal ownership of planetary resources leading to extremes of wealth and poverty with the majority subject to the minority. This apparent right of personal ownership of the planet's resources also leads to unchecked desecration of these resources.
The creation of a sustainable planet first requires the emergence of a new economic paradigm which acknowledges that the planet's resources belong to all mankind and provide the natural and sustainable source of communal wealth - known to classic economists as the economic rent. Such a paradigm would lead to national economies being based upon this fundamental truth and the implementation of a system clearly distinguishing between personal and public ownership and leading to economic justice for all and a sustainable planet.

Sustainability and Quality of Life
Horace Regnart

There are good reasons for believing that Planet Earth cannot support more than about 10 Milliard people sustainably with an acceptable quality of life. The actual number might even be much less, depending on the definition of "Quality of Life". This limit is ignored by Demographers Politicians & Economists who consider that an aging population is an economic disaster & that perpetual population increase is necessary to avoid it. This short paper attempts to show with elementary arithmetic how empirically established dietary techniques etc can disprove this, and demonstrate a number of simple ratios relevant to this and similar issues.

Scientific Religiousness
Amrit Sorli

Scientific experience of the reality is rational. Perception and experience become separated through the rational activity of the mind. Let's analyse this indirect way of experiencing. Information enters the senses, goes into the mind where it is processed, and becomes an experience.
reality - perceiving - processing (mind) - rational experience
The rational part of the mind processes the perception of an object or event through logic and mathematics: that's how experience is formed. Let's do a simple experiment. You observe for a few moments a plant in your room or one that is outside the window, and then close your eyes. Inside yourself you observe many thoughts, like how big the plant is, what colour it is, and so on. The mind's elaboration creates a gap between perception and experience.
Religious experience is direct, one experiences reality as has been perceived in the senses. The difference between object and subject disappear, one becomes one with the whole existence. Religious experience can be described as oceanic, ecstatic, mystic, it reveals the divine nature of the reality. Rational experience is quantitative, religious is qualitative.
reality - perceiving - religious experience
By watching the mind one can develop rational experience in a religious experience. Humans have the capacity to watch and become aware how mind elaborates perception. One can close one's eyes and watch the stream of thoughts in one's inner space whenever one likes. Religious experience requires us to become aware of all thoughts, emotions and images that are associated with the object or situation that we experience.
Watching the mind is the function of consciousness in the similar way as movement of the body is function of the muscles. By moving the body the muscles get strong, by practising watching, consciousness gets activated and woken up; one can experience a plant consciously without mind's elaboration. All techniques for awakening of consciousness are based on human capacity to watch and be aware of what is happening in the present moment: e.g. movement of the body, breathing, stream of thoughts that runs trough the mind. The final result of practising awareness is a non-dualistic experience of reality that in the East is called enlightenment.
By watching arises doubt that the scientific picture of reality is real. Simultaneously it creates trust that direct experience of the reality without mind interference is possible. Watching includes doubt and trust. It as an individual research method that gives possibility to become truly religious and discover a spiritual dimension of the world. A person that is truly religious keep being doubtful in all images of the God that human mind has created. He/she wants to experience God directly.
Watching leads into a conscious experience that has a rational and religious dimension. Mind is still present, able to perform mathematical description of reality whenever needed. By accepting watching as an individual research method science will become religious. It will build up the bridge between man's mind and his consciousness.

Being Born and Dying: Processes of Responsibility and Awe.
Dr. Bart van der Lugt

Having worked in the planes of birth and dying and at the moment still working at an obstetrical ward at a Hospital in the Netherlands I aim with this presentation, with the support of slides, music, poems and the spoken word, to link the physical responsibility of being born and dying with the mystical awe, on the one hand, and on the other hand to convey the feeling and knowledge that these two processes at the end turn up to be quite similar: processes of midwifery.

Tidal Stream Power Generation
Tony Morse

Tidal Stream Power Generation holds great promise for the future and is being viewed as one of the most promising renewable energy sources for the coming decades. The recent UK and Scottish Executive commitments to promoting renewable energy systems and sources will see exciting advances being made in "marine renewables" such as Wave and Tidal Power.
Unlike Wind, Wave and Solar Photovoltaic, Tidal Stream Power does not rely on the weather. The force and movement of the tides is derived purely from gravitational and topographical effects. Devices to convert the kinetic energy in the tides to "green" electricity are under development, and the first decade of this century will see commercial tidal stream generators in operation.
Future Tidal Stream devices will be positioned on the seabed, with little or no visual impact above the surface. Their environmental impact will be low when compared to other renewable energy systems. Tidal "Stream" devices sit independently on the seabed, they are not the same as Tidal "Barrages" (These large "Barrage" structures require expensive concrete "dams" to be placed across a River, Estuary or small Bay. There are concerns regarding the environmental and economic implications of Tidal Barrage Systems).
In Addition, Tidal Stream generators will be much smaller than equivalent land based windturbines, but will be able to deliver the same power output. This is because the fluid density of water is about 800 times that of air, giving a considerably higher kinetic energy system.
The talk will describe the term "Tidal Stream Power" Generation and will compare and contrast these systems with other renewable energy sources. The tidal resources available in the UK and overseas will be described. The concept use of using existing oil and gas technology to advance the development of Tidal Stream systems will be discussed in detail.

Low Frequency Noise and Infrasound in the Environment
Hazel Guest

Low frequency noise and infrasound from building resonances caused by machinery in the neighbourhood, has been an increasing problem in the UK and other countries for at least two decades. Because the frequencies involved are at the lower end of the audible range, some people can hear them as noise while others cannot hear them at all, with the result that the distress of the former is frequently dismissed. Funding for research into the medical effects of exposure has not been forthcoming, and yet governments have been carrying out classified research into the use of low frequencies as disabling weapons.

Embodied Consciousness: A Clinicians Stroll on the Consciousness Meadow -
Body, Information Processing and Personal Change
Dr. Bo Ahrenfelt

As a body psychotherapist, I am sometimes amazed by the cognitive reactions from my clients when we work with the body. It seems that there is a connection between the body, an information-processing which must be considered a form of cognitive and personal development. Information that is stored in the body, not the brain, can be released, translated into verbal language and communicated. The process can be described as activated senso-motoric-emo-cognitive patterns, which are unique for every one of us. Body reactions that lead into affect, which precedes the emotional response and a verbalising of the experience. There is a personal logic to it and the psychotherapist's job is to help the client to investigate these patterns and their consequences. In psychodynamics, main stream medicine and often in the general discussion there is a distinct difference between psyche and soma. The soma has very little to do with cognitive function and processing. My hypothesis is that there is an organismic process and how the information is used, psychic or somatic is secondary.
A number of questions come forth. How can the body process cognitive information? What is somatic recall or body memory? What happens when we become one with our body? Can bodies communicate without using the "thinking-brain"? What is it we get in touch with when we get embodied consciously? Jungian archetypes? Freudian unconscious? Reichian body language? Or, is there something else, deep down under? Something that cannot be understood as an idea, but must be experienced? I will share my experiences and ideas about the body as the first, preverbal cognitive process and what consequences this might have for psychotherapy and personal development in general. I will advocate the notion that our body, not the brain, is the container of a primary, and therefore highly important, consciousness. The cortex's activity is a secondary and have, of course, a very important complementary information process. However, our body makes the first coarse assessment of any situation, thought or impulse.

Sustainable Medicine : Responsible Intervention
Zoë Capernaros

When making choices in medical care, we all bear a certain responsibility. Without doubt, medical science has rapidly advanced in the last century but this advance has brought with it dilemma and controversy. The power to make life and death decisions is a great but awesome burden, borne not only by medical staff but also by friends and family as well as the patient themselves. In our current technocracy, ideas of risk, spiritual rather than temporal control over life and death and 'external forces' have largely declined. This may not be entirely healthy.
Unprecedented levels of technological intervention in healthcare are now starting to create financial and emotional strain. The emotional content is partly due to the fact that we are now in a position to sustain life beyond a point at which it would be feasible without the 'machines' and chemical interventions. At a lesser extreme, not only life but health is supported in an unsustainable way; due to limited resources a lottery ensues of who should get the intervention and who should not.
'A pill for every ill' and other such myths created by vested interests have ensured that we are disempowered; belief in self care is at a very low ebb. The effect on our primary care resources has snowballed - the situation is rapidly reaching breaking point. Perhaps we should consider 'demedicalising' some conditions. We might begin to recognise the benefits in resisting technological advances which are not sustainable, nor contribute to sustainability.

Ecology with Spirit
Dr. Jean Hardy and Dr. Wendy Stayte

We will map out how individuals and groups in our local area of South Devon are working towards a partnership of sustainable living on many levels, for all species and for land in the area. Modern technology and old fashioned personal responsibility are equally applicable to the task. Underlying these initiatives is a search for spiritual ways of living on this planet.
We will be inviting members of the workshop to create their own maps of their current and desired personal and local ecology, and consider how these activities could evolve creatively and worldwide in the future.

Towards a Postsecular Society
Dr Mike King, London Metropolitan University

The presentation will focus on the concept of the 'postsecular' as an emerging renewal of interest in the spiritual. This renewal is not a return to the presecular religions of the premodern era, however, but takes forward the genuine progress made in society in the recognition of the democratic rights and freedoms of the individual - more than that, a celebration of individuality and pluralism. In the Network we have seen a renewal of the spiritual triggered by issues around science and medicine, but we can identify seven contexts for the postsecular:

1. The 'new' sciences of quantum mechanics, relativity and chaos (complexity) theory, which challenge the deterministic, mechanistic and reductionist worldview
2. The emerging field of consciousness studies
3. Transpersonal psychology from Jung to Wilber
4. Sections of Postmodern thinking including Heidegger and Levinas
5. Sections of Christian theology, in particular the 'Radical Orthodoxy', inspired by Postmodernism
6. The creative arts in the 20th C, for example artists from Constantin Brancusi to Bill Viola who have explored a wide range of conventional and unconventional spiritualities in their art
7. Deep ecology and 'ecosophy,' mystical approaches to Nature, from Thoreau to Dillard.

This presentation will explore these contexts, with particular emphasis on the last, in relation to the theme of the conference regarding sustainable lifestyles. A postsecular society needs a spiritual relationship with nature to ensure its survival.
Dr King will also introduce the Centre for Postsecular Studies, which he has recently established at London Metropolitan University.

To Everything There is a Season
Dr. Ann Roden

The Hippocratic and Ayurvedic traditions speak of eating fresh food in season, tasted, enjoyed and in measured quantity. The supermarkets sell everything all the year round from all over the world. To resolve this dilemma I undertook a search of the gardening books to see how I could practise a healthy sustainable lifestyle, based on foods grown in this country. I assembled all the information about vegetables, salads and fruits, sprouted seeds, together with the basic principles of Ayurveda and the quotations from the texts in the form of a laminated wall-chart that goes well in the kitchen!

 

Conference report by Max Payne